Limited movie reviews

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, March 27, 2008

LOST IN BEIJING

In a montage of Beijing life, director Yu Li cuts from a poster of a movie star to the copycat glamour of a street prostitute. It is a piece of visual shorthand representing his clever allegory of the new materialism taking hold of present-day China. Banned for sexual explicitness uncharacteristic of Chinese cinema, as well as its unflattering portrait of the city, "Lost in Beijing" tells the story of a man who, when his wife becomes pregnant after being raped by her employer, enters into a series of financial negotiations with him. Among the film's disturbing observations: The notion of a child as commodity, the paternity of which is a deed to the ownership of its mother. The four principal characters are portrayed not as villains, but as victims of greed, caught up in a cycle in which the rich own the poor and the poor rob the rich. A slightly comic tone lightens the darkness of the theme, which is intensified in a subplot about a co-worker who pays a high price for the gifts she receives. (Bill White)

GRADE B

At the Grand Illusion today through Thursday. In Mandarin with English subtitles. 112 minutes. Unrated.

LIVE AND BECOME

The first part of Radu Mihaileanu's tale of an Ethiopian refugee's life in Israel promises more than the often trivial soap opera that follows. These quietly epic scenes cry with the faces of poverty and sorrow, bleed with the loneliness of survival, and soar with a gentle yet tragic ascent to paradise. Standing in his first indoor shower, little Schlomo (Moshe Agazai) looks up with wonder at the falling water, then panics when he sees it disappearing down the drain, the result of a life in a parched, desert land. Although not Jewish, he must pretend to be to survive, but fears that in doing so he will become unrecognizable to his mother. As Schlomo grows up, he is played by two more actors who are successively less appealing than Agazai, whose expressive simplicity is more profound than words. When Mosche Abebe, a stylishly coiffed clotheshorse who looks like he stepped out of a Gap ad, takes over the part, Schlomo becomes a cipher, and his story narrows to a situation in which a Jewish girl pines for her African boyfriend for 10 years before he finally marries her and reveals the secret of his racial identity. (Bill White)

GRADE B

At the Varsity today through Thursday. In Hebrew, French, and English with English subtitles. 140 minutes. Unrated.

BOARDING GATE

Writer-director Olivier Assayas must have been working out some personal demons to make something as embarrassing as "Boarding Gate," the most trite and trivial piece of sleaze since Abel Ferrara's "Snake Eyes." Asia Argento, looking and acting like a crack whore (if one surmises she is on drugs it is because it is hard to believe she would intentionally give such a revolting performance), plays Sandra, ex-girlfriend of unscrupulous businessman Miles (Michael Madsen), on whom she takes revenge for the smutty use he made of her with his business associates. Sandra is now in love with Hong Kong gangster Lester, who manipulates her to his own ends before abandoning her to an unclear fate. Also in the cast is Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, looking terrible in a small and indecipherable part. Assayas has made some confusing movies before, but never because of poor staging. His directing, in movies such as "Scene of the Crime," "Irma Vep," and "Demonlover," has always been as clean as steel. Here it is a muddle, filled with unpleasant people acting pretentiously mysterious. The sexual S&M is never as ugly as the impression that, when a murder occurs onscreen, Assayas is not simply killing off a fictional character, but finding closure to one of his own unresolved love affairs. (Bill White)

GRADE: C

At the Northwest Film Forum today through Thursday. With English subtitles. 106 minutes. Rated R for violence, sexual content, language and some drug material.